Beach Diaries, Mixed (Regnier) 8/22/11
Sam Regnier
Posted: August 22, 2011 03:30 PM
Day 1 thoughts
A quick introduction: my name is Sam Regnier and I'm playing for Team USA in the mixed division at the 2011 World Ultimate Beach Championships. I'm 28, I live in Los Angeles, and I play the club series with Seven Figures, a SoCal mixed team of unsurpassed attractiveness.
On to the real deal: beach worlds. A few quick notes before we get to the games:
- The turnout: awesome. With almost 1000 athletes playing for 30 different countries at this world championships, beach ultimate is on pace to become the most popular sport in the world in approximately fifteen months.
- Me: sometimes liberal with statistics.
- The heat: challenging. Temps in the 90's, with no cloud cover and 0% chance of rain every day this week, add a new hurdle to overcome. There was one case of heat stroke today, but luckily it wasn't me. And he's ok.
- My team: super-sick ballers.
On to the recaps:
12 PM: USA v. Venezuela
A note on rules: every day each team plays 2-3 games to 13. No half (choose offense!), 1 TO per half, cap at 45 minutes (don't fall behind!).
Going into the tournament, I had very little idea of which teams would be good, but I did know that people get pumped up to play the #1 seed. True to form, Venezuela started strong, going up 2-1 by stringing together a series of cuts to the open side. It seems that nobody wanted to start the tourney by getting beat deep.
After committing to stopping the unders, and with captain Stevie Ray Dugan exhorting us to apply aggressive marks, we righted the ship and forced a series of throwaways in the first third and fast-breaked for easy goals. Some nice zone points in the second half sealed a 13-5 win.
Shout-outs: the Dugan to Tyler Grant connection (both directions), a few athletic catches by Liz Willets, and a huge grab by Rachel Gross at the end of the second half that brought the crowd to its feet.
4 PM: USA vs. Slovakia
After lunch and some HARD resting (including watching the USA women beat France 13-4), we came out strong against Slovakia. With a game already under our belt we were much more comfortable, utilizing big cross field dump-swings to break down the defense and utilize the huge amount of lateral space a full-size BULA field presents.
Shout-outs: Lisa "Stats" Pitcaithley notching another series of goals/assists, bringing her total to 6+ for the two games, a monster layout grab in the end zone by Mike "Prof" McGuirk on a break mark backhand from An-Chi Tsou, and to the team for working together on several more effective zone points.
More tomorrow. Tchau from Liggiano.
Team USA Beach Diaries
Some members of Team USA will be submitting diary entries during the event to keep everyone posted on their experience in Italy.